Rabbi Bruce Warshal: As Israel Isolates itself from the world

June 8, 2010|By Rabbi Bruce Warshal

Let's separate truth from the bald-faced lies emanating from the Israeli government and the organized American Jewish community that repeats them.

First: There is no suffering in Gaza, if you believe a six page memo from the Israeli government that proclaims that their blockade allows adequate food and materials to make life comfortable there. We are asked to believe Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a known racist who has advocated expelling Israeli Arab citizens from Israel, when he proclaims, "There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip…Israel continues to respond in the most humane way possible."

The truth is that Israel has closed the Gaza border so that commerce between Gaza and the rest of the world has ceased. This has thrown approximately 60 percent of the residents out of work, forcing them to live off UN food supplies that Israel graciously allows them to distribute. But fully 2,000 items are restricted including basic foods.

I often quote Haaretz simply because it is the New York Times of Israel, a source of balanced and intelligent news, albeit from a liberal perspective. A Haaretz writer asks, "Can the experts please explain: Why does the Health Ministry recommend for the diet of Israeli infants and toddlers — 'soft fruit such as bananas and avocado, cooked chicken and beef, and cheese cubes' — not apply to Palestinian children? These particular items are all strictly forbidden from entering Gaza, while rice and a limited selection of meat and produce are the only food items in fact allowed to enter."

The UN special coordinator for the Middle East, Robert Serry, writes, "I am particularly concerned that the current closure creates unacceptable suffering." Reuters reports that "Gaza's 1.5 million people face shortages of water and medicine." This past week an editorial in Haaretz characterized the siege as "brutal" and "inhumane."

Amnesty International reports that four out of five Gazans need humanitarian assistance and that medical treatment is not adequate and that people die as a result of this. The Israelis have not allowed the reconstruction of the al-Quds hospital in Gaza by blockading building materials on "security grounds." The bottom line is best summarized by the Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy: "The propaganda operation has tried to sell us and the world the idea that the occupation of Gaza is over, but in any case, Israel has the legal authority to bar humanitarian aid. All one pack of lies."

The Israeli government and its American apologists were ironically exposed when an Israeli government spokesman pointed to the "bustling smuggling industry" through the tunnels leading into Egypt which brings "consumer goods, gasoline and livestock into the seaside strip" as proof that there is no hardship there. (Haaretz 5/31) Now if the blockade were not cruel and oppressive why would Gazans have to smuggle consumer goods and livestock through tunnels?

This brings us to the peace flotilla which was boarded in the middle of the night in international waters 80 miles from the Gaza coastline. The Israeli government has characterized the prime Turkish sponsoring organization, the I.H.H., as "a dangerous Islamic organization with terrorist links." ARZA, the Zionist wing of the Reform Movement, brands them "extremists who brought small children on board...hoping to provoke what could be a violent confrontation." A South Florida Christian anti-Muslim organization branded the peace flotilla "an amphibious Jihad assault."

The New York Times reports that the I.H.H. was founded in 1992 to collect aid for the Bosnians and is now active in 120 countries. It has been present at recent disaster areas like Haiti and New Orleans. Certainly the vast majority of the 700 people on the six flotilla ships were not known terrorists. It included the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, the retired American Ambassador Edward Peck and many European legislators.

But the Israeli government and its American apologists resorted to the old Jewish tactic of branding anyone who criticizes you as an anti-Semite, or in the new parlance, a terrorist. Alain Gresh, writing in Le Monde, quotes Henry Kissinger defining the negotiating principles of Israel's government in the 1970s, saying that if "you agree with them only 95 percent, you're a dangerous anti-Semite." The same principle applies today, especially for critics of this right-wing current government. This makes me a self hating Jew or something worse, an Arab-lover who sympathizes with the plight of 1.5 million Gazans.